Innovation Prowess: Leadership Strategies for Accelerating Growth

Achieving superior growth through innovation is a top strategic priority for all companies. Yet most management teams struggle to reach their firm’s ambitious growth targets and suffer slow growth. What distinguishes these growth laggards from growth leaders like IBM, Nike, LEGO,

Overview

A framework for achieving superior rates of organic growth

Achieving superior growth through innovation is a top strategic priority for all companies. Yet most management teams struggle to reach their firm’s ambitious growth targets and suffer slow growth. What distinguishes these growth laggards from growth leaders like IBM, Nike, LEGO, American Express, Amazon, and Samsung that realize their full potential for growth?

Wharton professor George S. Day shows that growth leaders use their innovation prowess to accelerate their growth at a faster rate. In this essential guide, Day reveals how to build this prowess by combining discipline in growth-seeking activities with an organizational ability to innovate. Day shows managers how to set a growth strategy that is realistic while still stretching the organization; search for the best growth opportunities along the full spectrum of 14 growth pathways; aim their growth-seeking activities toward the creation of new customer value; learn to profit from the uncertainty of innovation by successfully assessing and containing risk; build the organizational muscle to implement an ambitious growth strategy; and move faster from ideas to impact.

With the strategies, processes, and methods discussed in Innovation Prowess, leaders can build a tested and comprehensive strategy for driving organic growth year after year.

The Wharton Executive Essentials SeriesThe Wharton Executive Essentials series from Wharton Digital Press brings the ideas of the Wharton School’s thought leaders to you wherever you are. Inspired by Wharton’s Executive Education program, each book is authored by globally renowned faculty and offers a quick-reading, penetrating, and comprehensive summary of the knowledge leaders need to excel in today’s competitive business environment and capture tomorrow’s opportunities.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

“George Day has captured a concept that is relevant for all companies trying to increase their organic growth rate. His key insight is that growth leaders have developed both discipline and ability. It is akin to having brain and brawn; you have to have both to stay ahead.”Vijay Govindarajan, Professor at Tuck at Dartmouth College, Coauthor of NYT and WSJ Bestseller Reverse Innovation

“The book provides a valuable contribution to managing the fuzzy front end of product innovationto deciding your innovation strategy, picking the most attractive areas to focus on, achieving competitive advantage via the right growth pathways, and driving new products to market. A must read for every executive interested in fostering their firm’s innovation efforts.”Robert G. Cooper, Professor Emeritus McMaster University, Creator of the Stage-Gate System

“Profitable growth is a priority and challenge for top management. Innovation is critical to sustainable organic growth in organizations. Marketing leaders should and can play a key role in helping drive innovation and growth, and George Day's book is a little gem of insight and action for deploying successful growth strategies.”Dennis Dunlap, Chief Executive Officer, American Marketing Association

“A very timely and practical book on accelerating growth through innovative thinking, and not just through innovation! As usual, George Day is masterful in articulating 14 different paths for organic growth through value creation and value capturing capabilities. They range from overcoming barriers to consumption, satisfying unmet needs to changing the business model of how you make money.”Dr. Jagdish N. Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Emory University

“Read this book! I found ideas on every page on how to pursue growth and use innovative thinking to spot opportunities (through 14 pathways) and realize them through improving the company's culture, capabilities, and configuration.”Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management and author of Winning at Innovation and Market Your Way to Growth

“Refreshingly stimulating and actionable. George Day's Innovation Prowess offers a powerful framework to help executive teams foster innovation for organic growth. Building on his deep knowledge of this domain, Day's disciplined process starts with a hard assessment of growth gaps and small-i versus BIG-I innovation. He then outlines 14 concrete growth pathways that provide a much-needed antidote to incremental thinking, as well as concise templates that put rigor in selecting the best innovation opportunities. Equally potent are his perspectives on the people and organizational aspects that determine the ability to innovate. In all, an indispensable and highly recommended book for business leaders.”Fred Wiersema, Customer Strategist, Chair, B2B Leadership Board, Institute for the Study of Business Markets at Penn State, and coauthor of the topselling The Discipline of Market Leaders

“A keen focus on innovation is essential in all economic climates. However, innovation is a skill that must be nurtured and developed both by the individual and the organization. Dr. George Day outlines a fresh perspective on driving profitable growth in his book Innovation Prowess. It is a quick, must read for those focused on growth opportunities in their company.”Scott Sanderude, Vice President, Global Market Development & Marketing, Praxair, Inc.

“Professor George Day provides the right formula and process for nurturing innovation and organic growth. It is not enough to have good ideas or leading edge technology. Companies that invest in technology but not in market and organizational development invite failure. Those that innovate successfully year after year have developed the culture and capability to question and validate assumptions, continuously refine concepts to make them market-ready. They also learn to manage risks by exercising options contingent on market intelligence. Indeed, successful organizations converge on one universal truth: the biggest risk is not taking risks to extract value from innovations.”Prof. Dr. Rajendra K. Srivastava, Provost and Deputy President (Academic Affairs), Singapore Management University

“Many large enterprises continue to be challenged by disruptive innovations due to rigid business models, capabilities, organization, and culture. Very few are able to transition to a flexible, dynamic model where they can successfully manage both BIG-I and small-i innovations. George Day has done a masterful job of integrating several powerful frameworks for identifying and selecting the right innovation opportunities and providing a blueprint for enterprises to implement a sustainable innovation model. This will become a very valuable resource for anyone looking to shift the innovation paradigm in their organization.”Scott A. Snyder, PhD., President and Chief Strategy Officer, Mobiquity Inc., Senior Fellow, The Wharton School and Associate Adjunct Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

“This is the best book on innovation that I have read. As Day illustrates, innovation is messy and multi-faceted, but requires a disciplined approach. This book concisely joins the dots of his and others' experience to help managers create an organization that can repeatedly innovate and challenge itself to change and to create innovation for organic growth. This is done by clearly articulating what makes organizations into repeat innovators as well as the barriers to innovation, and within this, giving managers a set of questions to help them diagnose the innovation capability of their organization. It's the answers to those questions rather than a template or the latest best practice that will continuously guide teams to improve their innovation prowess. In that way this book should set up a self-sustaining path to create self-sustaining innovation.”Robert N. Shaddock, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, TE Connectivity

“George Day has crafted a very rich and creative set of strategies for stimulating organic growth through innovation. His recommendations are supported by numerous fresh examples that drive the message home. This insightful book will be highly valuable for any executive focused on organic growth through innovation “Gerard Tellis, Professor, Director, and Neely Chair of American Enterprise at USC Marshall School of Business and author of Unrelenting Innovation: How to Create a Culture for Market Dominance